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ho are they? What are they
seeking? I wonder.
Where might they be going? Isn’t there any way of knowing?
About all those things I ponder.
Yet all I can feel are memories, all those memories...
Memories, memories...
...of a dark, cloudy sky, mountains, and of waterfalls, houses, people, all
sorts of those flying by... standing on the wayside, walking, running, working,
waving, greeting... flying by, flying by... time's too short for stopping,
tarrying, meeting...
Memories, so many memories...
...of that rhythm of tortured wheels chasing through cobbled streets... between
rolling hills, on rutty roads, into villages, bustling towns, past shrines,
alongside sacred grounds... squeak... squeak... the carriage incessantly
creaks.... tack-tack-a-tackaty-tock... tack-tack-a-tackaty-tock, the
horses leisurely trot... then suddenly they burst into the wildest gallop...
wapush... driven by the cracking of a whip... tackaty-tock...
tackaty-tock... wapush... through the forest, past the trees....
Memories... Memories...
...of twigs brushing, scratching like claws against the door… of a trunk
breaking loose, rumbling and careering about the cabin floor... noises, noises,
everywhere noises... wind whispering, thunder rolling, so many of nature’s
daunting voices… tackaty-tock... tackaty-tock... wapush... so goes the
whip… there’s the driver’s coarse yell, the thunder’s again booming, then a
roaring swell... wapush... wapush... the carriage rocks back and forth in
constant strain… there goes the whip, again, again…
Memories...
…of the carriage skidding, spinning, swerving along... a bump, a jerk, a yank, a
jolt... and then with a final squeak it’s gone, that tortured creaking rhythm –
and takes the changing images with’em... just one remains as the carriage comes
to rest and silence spreads: the trees outside, the cabin door, the trunk there
on the cabin floor... for a brief moment silence falls, silence... silence...
just one soundless moment in midst of eternity… though pregnant it feels, full
with premonition, dread... it’s followed by the coachman’s shouts: “Flee! Oh, by
the Twelve, just flee!”...
One of many memories, followed by a memory...
...of a deep, dark shadow, doom descending from the skies, with ragged wings
spreading… something giant, overwhelming, deadly in size... frantic horses
neighing, the carriage swaying, the coachman shrieking, cussing, praying... a
violent thud, a thump, a horrid roar, a hollow bang… wood's splintering, a
deafening crash... branches piercing through the cabin’s side, glass in a
thousand pieces smashed...
Memories... unrelenting memories... bare of prospects, questions, reveries...
just ruthlessly recurring memories...
...of tumbling, falling, stumbling, crawling... out, out... "Leave!"... leave
the chaos, pandemonium, the terror from above behind... footsteps, footsteps…
hurried footsteps... scampering, desperately racing over gnarled roots, trudging
through the underbrush... away, away, so goes the beat of escaping boots... from
death and demons those footsteps rush...
Memories...
...of distraught shrieks, of heavily beating wings dying away... sounds drowning
in the distance, and with the noises so goes the fray, forever enwrapped in the
cloak of the night... footsteps, footsteps… further, further, into the
unknown... guided by the moon’s incandescent brilliant light, mist-shrouded,
eerie, ever so bright... onwards, into the woods now, the thicket, the dark, the
obscure, onwards past specters and shadows, deep, deep down into the moors...
Memories, memories...
...of ghostly shapes, unearthly phantoms fluttering in the breeze... of wafts
drifting, circling, ever shifting over scattered grasses, moldy pools and
withered trees… everything's submerged in melancholy, aye, it has soaked this
place for decades, even centuries... now to be disrupted by hissing, wheezing,
frantic mumbling... brittle wood lies all around, decaying, upon the slightest
touch now crumbling… the fresh twigs are cracking, snapping... and so the race
goes on, the swamp along... into the mud, through leafy, mossy, mushy grounds...
coated by earthen odor, up it goes, up that slanting, slippery, shaky mound...
Memories...
...of owls cackling, crickets chirping, frogs croaking… and there, all of a
sudden emerging from its marshy lair: faint, soft orbs of light, gently they are
floating… orbs, flickering balls from everywhere approaching: they're fading,
growing, shrinking, spinning with the wind as its blowing, rising, sinking,
darting forward, sideways, ever changing, sometimes there's a glow, at other
times a blaze… a strange kind of magic it is that permeates the mire's haze...
Who are they? What are they seeking? I wonder.
Where might they be going? Isn’t there any way of knowing?
About all those things I ponder.
Memories, haunting memories...
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Picture description. A magical encounter in the moors. Image drawn by
Seeker. |
…of the translucent orbs dancing,
two, three, four, almost romancing the one who’s entered their abode, the
intruder who’s panting, heavily gasping, he, who’s lost, his breath rattling,
rasping, into an alluring, colorful world now tossed… the hovering balls
continue to grow and to shrink, they radiate and blink, they soar, they whirl,
sink back and swirl, beguile, bewitch, entice, and demand what’s their due: a
volunteer, a soul, a sacrifice, all of these – to cover, to bury, to drown, only
to leave… memories…
Memories… still lingering memories… as if they were fever driven fantasies...
…of gruesome remnants stemming from a long past slaughter… there: two lifeless
faces bob up from below!... worm covered skulls of swamp claimed daughters tell
a hideous tale of deathly woes... floating, starring, up into the night sky
eyeless sockets are ghastly glaring… welcome stranger at our murky waters…
welcome, they seem to say… see, what a wet, inviting grave this is? A
final home for... memories?
Memories...
...of joining the pair in their forsaken misery… of gliding, sliding, slipping…
of an unsure foot… over foul, slimy roots it’s hesitating, struggling, tripping…
Memories… memories…
...of being devoured by the dismal bog… of depths claiming the drowning by the
boot… of the futile battle to still grasp just one saving rotten log… of meeting
fate, dragged under by the deadly clasp of an unseen root…
Memories…
…of the putrid, gooey, reeking pool that had lain in waiting, baiting, and now
grabs itself with vile delight the chosen, the pawn, the latest fool, to hand
him over to eternal night… defeated, overpowered, sentenced… the prey is drawn
towards the ugly maw of the abyss, where reluctantly it seeks entrance, in
desperate hope that there’s one more world, just one more, right after this… a
short struggle and a thing of the past he is...
A memory… one of many memories…
…aye, for that's what it must be, a memory: a lasting sensation, an unending
thought... that what prevails when everything else returns to naught... a notion
that abides when something's gone, something's lost, that still shines in the
new dawn, after a link is broken, a frontier's been crossed… like this last one
I can still see that I'm tempted to call...
A memory...
...aye, the last one of those... that makes me sense, as if through a veil, how
something else has risen... as if torn, nay, more rescued from its earthly
prison... aye, that's when... I... came to be, when… I... soared from the grisly
waters... found myself drifting, the moonlight towards… up, up, away from the
drowned stranger and those quiet daughters… softly I glowed, brilliantly I
blazed, up and around, had become a dancing part of the luminous haze... which
is when they end, the memories... which is when I emerged unbound and free, as
that what I am and whatever I'm going to be – for days and decades, maybe
centuries...
With me nothing but... memories...
What is it that they really mean? Sometimes at least it would seem that since
the day I had risen what was left to me were all but visions... that I, myself,
once had somehow walked this earth, and that I had to perish, only to be given
birth... Like my brothers I've been ripped away on a moonlit night one fateful
day... About what I've been I'm still dreaming, and that is all that gives me
meaning…
Who are they? What are they seeking? I wonder.
Where might they be going? Isn’t there any way of knowing?
About all those things I ponder.
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